You can't cure human greed ! You can just expose it whenever you have the chance and fight against it.
I think that it is very important for the integrity of STEEM's social media platforms that this issues should be addressed and be solved. The only way for doing that is by making the information available to the community. Only by making this kind of information public, other abusers will think twice before making moves. Also the community needs to raise their opinions on this kind of matters, no matter what decisions will be made. I want to protect my investment in STEEM and all of you should do that also. Making things right will not only increase the price of STEEM longterm, but will also create a pleasant environment on the STEEM's social media platforms.
Regarding the starting meme, you will soon find out what he choose.
In february I decided to start posting memes and gifs on the dMania platform. I was working 3-4 hours/day learning to make gifs with photoshop like this one here: https://steemit.com/dmania/@equ1l1br1um/bitcoin-vs-bcash-this-days-zg1hbmlh-fzzxf , only to realize that people would just copy paste the first meme that they see on 9gag or other sources, post it here and upvote it through bid bots so that they can get the dMania bot up vote. This were the rules then : if you managed to stay aproximately 8-10 hours in the trending section on dMania you would have got the vote from the bot. You can read about the rules from back then here.
I started to realize soon that there where plenty of abuses going on the platform by people who where using multiple accounts, some of them with 10 different accounts. So I decided to gather the info and send it to zombee, who is the dMania owner and a hyprocrite (you will see later in this post why), and send that info to him in order to get those users blacklisted as they should.
But zombee didn't blacklist all of them and was delaying every blacklist even tough the proof was solid : transfers between accounts visible on steemdb, promoting the post from one account with SBD from another account through bid bots and so on... I thought he was focusing on improving the algorithm at first and I hoped the quality will improve after some changes.
Some abuse that I have reported to him : One guy with at least 11 accounts who received a lot of rewards and was at that time ranked 3 in rewards/year : discord message zombee + another one with at least 5 accounts : discord message zombee. For this ones it took him like 2-3 days to blacklist them, even with the solid proof.
His reply : discord message zombee
So I said ok, he wants to improve the algorithm, but it felt strange when he said this with the 3 accounts thing : discord message zombee and last week he said this : general section dMania discord - this was the moment when I started looking for solid proof against him . I suspected he was up to something but it didn't crossed my mind to search him at that point. You will soon see what in the next chapter, clear crystal proof.
Another key abuse that I have reported to him and that he took one month to blacklist, after I messaged him 2 times and finally posted the proof in the dMania discord general section to force his hand to blacklist this user :
droucil creates account -----> gobble (https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=11) creates account ----> japper (https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=9)
droucil creates account ----> gametube (https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=13) creates account ---> kingmeme (https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=12) + real-reality (https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=5) ;
droucil --- > low-high (anonsteem) transfers with the same bittrex account code as droucil (https://gyazo.com/75f2f78332bdd0781172df8e38e58d83 ; https://gyazo.com/bb9a2a666ed043dbd547f83b4d5e8ade) creates accounts ----> zeonair + lion1 + bitbong (anonsteem) : https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=9 (lion1+bitbong) ; https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=11 (zeonair)
Press ctrl+f on anonsteem pages and search the names and you will see who sent the money and which accounts where created
You can check all accounts here :
https://steemit.com/@droucil (main account , didn't post on dMania)
https://steemit.com/@zeonair
https://steemit.com/@gobble
https://steemit.com/@japper
https://steemit.com/@lion1
https://steemit.com/@bitbong
https://steemit.com/@kingmeme
https://steemit.com/@real-reality
https://steemit.com/@gametube
Clear proof, still @droucil managed to get rich by getting daily upvotes from dMania. In most cases 5 votes/day. I later understood that @zombee was up voting this guys accounts with his main account and with the accounts that we will talk in the following section even if the info about him was already sent. This guy was probably a friend or a guy who he made a deal with as I didn't find direct connection. If that is the case I invite @droucil to make it clear for us and maybe he can have a second chance. If not I invite @steemcleaners and whoever can to take care of him.
This are only 2 months rewards that droucil got with those accounts and it doesn't show all of them, because it's a top 23 or something :
source : https://steemit.com/dmania/@paulag/feb-18-dmania-steem-app-analysis-blockchain-business-intelligence
https://steemit.com/dmania/@paulag/march-18-dmania-steem-app-analysis-blockchain-business-intelligence
On the 1st of march, @zombee released the dMania Bot v3 - Curation by dMania supporters . This update put the users who delegated to dMania in power, meaning that users who delegated would decide which post will get the upvote. So if one user delegated let's say 10000-20000 STEEM POWER at that point, then he could control all the upvotes that the bot does, because how much you delegated counted also. There was no reason that he would expect that everyone will play fair and circlejerking won't occur.
In the article he says this : "Excluding abusive supporters. If supporters upvote only themselves or a few selected users, their votes will be excluded from the selection process. Only supporters who regularly upvote other authors on dMania will be able to steer the upvotes of the bot.
That should prevent almost all abuse. If someone wants to abuse the dMania upvotes as a supporter, their upvotes will just be ignored." - That's funny because no one got excluded even tough there where strong evidence of circlejerking which I sent to him and could be easily tracked on the vote diversity graph here : http://www.steemreports.com/votes-graph/, so it was just smoke and mirrors, he was enjoying the delegations coming in...
september 30 2017 : zombee creates account @meme-maniac
source : https://steemd.com/@zombee?page=153 ; press ctrl+f and search for meme-maniac
He used this account to get a lot of upvotes from the bot back in the day :)
Now the most important part :
september 21 2017 - zombee creates account @garanger :
source : https://steemd.com/@zombee?page=151 press ctrl+f and search for garanger
march 1st 2018 - zombee announces dMania bot v3 Curation by supporters
march 2 2018 and march 10 2018 - Zombee creates 6 more accounts through account @garanger : https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=7 ; https://steemd.com/@anonsteem?page=5 , press ctrl+f and search for garanger
This 6 accounts as you can see in the links above are : @coindeluxe; @sinsister ; @puppet-master ; @terimar ; @ready-player-one ; @tank-girl
He even sends with @zombee account to @garanger the necesarry steem for that :
March 2 2018 is the date when he created 3 of the accounts with account garanger : https://steemd.com/@bittrex?page=154 : zombee transfers 1000 STEEM to bittrex, which is splitted between this 3 accounts : @coindeluxe , @sinsister, @puppet-master . Keep in mind that this happened one day after he introduced the supporter curation for the bot, so he knew what he was doing with the new update.
799.99 + 99.99 + 99.99 + 0.03 (fees) = 1000 STEEM
March 10 2018 is the date when he created the other 3 accounts with account garanger : https://steemd.com/@bittrex?page=129 : zombee transfers from the @dmania account 1500 STEEM to bittrex, which is splitted between 4 accounts : @sinsister (to improve delegation); @terimar ; @tank-girl ; @ready-player-one
1454.99 + 14.99 + 14.99 + 14.99 + 0.04(fees) = 1500 STEEM
He even delegates with this accounts to @dmania, not that he needed it, as his main account @zombee has over 5000 SP delegated and could overpass every up vote of other users, but he wanted to be sure and also increase his chance of being selected as a chosen one and collect rewards from the "chosen one system" (this is the system on how you get rewards from delegating on dMania besides the power of upvotes). This also means that was stealing other users chances, that delegated to dMania, to get selected as a chosen one on posts.
He did this with his other acounts also.
All accounts where posting in dMania, he was using 100% strength to upvote this accounts, while using 10-50% to vote for other people.
He was planing to use account @sinsister as top delegation one along his main account zombee that has 5000 SP delegated to vote for the other ones, which he did successfully for a time, but got stopped in delegating more.
March 10-11 can't remember exactly when, a friend of mine which I told him that it's possible that those are his accounts (I only knew about the first 3 accounts then and didn't had a direct connection to him), sends this meme to him from a different discord channel :
He wanted to let him know that we know what he is doing and to stop this bullshit and put his shit together. This friend also found out that he created 3 more. All accounts didn't post anymore after this. The meme stopped his plan of rapping the rewards, ain't that an irony ? :)
What I also found funny is that after that he started flagging posts from coindeluxe and sinsister with the puppet-master account, in his mind probably he was probably thinking that this is the best way to cover his tracks. A lesson should be that you can't cover anything on the steem blockchain, it's all there. If you made a mistake, you are busted and he made it from the begining.
Flagging accounts and upvoting accounts
There are lots of posts you can check for upvotes from zombee, sinsister, etc... You can always see this on steemd.com , you can see all history. Also if he removes votes you can see them on what he did in the last days or when he did it.
He probably will remove the votes or has removed most of them, but that's easy to track, not that we need more evidence than him creating the accounts, making an bot algorithm that favors his plan and vote for them...
Before my friend sent the meme he contacted @okean123 which is allegedly a 'sensei' - admin on the discord channel. There is a high probability that his guy is actually zombee as he always turns out when problems occur and he knew stuff that only zombee would know. Take a look at this :
I invite @okean123 to prove how he knew about this and also how he had access to the dMania bot (probably steem keys or access to the code) and I suggest other people should ask about this. I believe that this account belongs to zombee also, but I may be wrong. Even so, if it doesn't belong to him, this guy did some bad stuff covering for him as he knew about the accounts and also had access to the bot account and giving upvotes by himself.
I also invite @kid4life who is a friend of zombee's and knew about the sinsister account and what zombee was doing. Zombee always upvoted him on his posts with his main account and also with his alt accounts, especially with @sinsister. You can check that out on steemd to see that he got many upvotes from this accounts. I found this message on sinsister account from a transfer after zombee was forced to stop his abuse :
I also invite @droucil again to come clean and tell us what really happened between him and zombee (the guy with 7 accounts created through anonsteem that we talked in the beginning, who got a lot of upvotes from zombee and especially from his alt account @sinsister). Remember that it took him 1 month after many users reported this to him to blacklist droucil and his alt accounts. Eventually I was forced to press zombee to blacklist him by posting 2 times the info in the discord general section, so people will get angry and that he won't have any choice besides blacklisting him. Probably had a deal going on with him and this is how it probably went through :) :
You can find the article here. The vulnerability was found by @sircork. Many thanks for protecting me and other users from this kind of unpleasant situations. He later edit his article, as soon as the problem was fixed by zombee and did updates on the situation.
Based on the proof that I just showed you earlier in the article, there is no reason for me to think that he wasn't involved in this also. You would say like I did back then, when I found out about the situation : "Why would he put all the project and his reputation at risk by doing this? He won't earn to much money by doing that, even to the traffic is fairly good." Now ask yourself : Why would he create so many accounts to get rewards from the bot by abusing his steem delegation and put his entire project at risk for that kind of money? The answer is simple : Human greed has no limits
I am not 100% sure about this thing, like we are now about the multiple accounts based on the clear proof, but I strongly suggest that someone who has the necessary skills for digging deeper on this, to find out if this was done by him or it was just a coincidence. If he did it and this is true there must be some consequences. I don't know to much about running mining scripts, if it breaks the laws, or it just is unethical behaviour, but we should do something if that is the case. I think steemit inc. should investigate this further or other people that want to help. If this is true who knows what other things he did. I suggest everyone that used dMania to change their keys, just in case, even tough the login is through steemconnect, I don't want to risk it.
In the beginning zombee probably tried to remove me from the bot selection algorithm to not get any more up votes. I was making to much waves and he probably didn't liked it. He probably thought that if I don't get the bot up vote for some time, I will quit and don't bother him anymore. He said that he was a mistake and some users where left out from the last update. Possible, but now that I think this back, it don't buy that :
After seeing that he doesn't care to much about quality and blacklists I created a contest to reward dMania users and curate original or very funny memes with my vote , which gave them a high chance for the bot upvote also. You can find the first week of the contest here. The contest lasted for 5 weeks and it helped a lot of users. It also increased the platforms overall quality. @lifeaef gave me the idea and he also was doing curation on his own, which helped a lot on making users work on their memes and gifs and increase the quality of the platform. Great job man, I hope you become a curator for a decent platform :).
There was one little problem with curating and still being a green supporter. Once zombee released dMania Bot v.3.1 - Vote distribution check for supporters he basically made it impossible to curate and keep your vote distribution high, as there weren't so many users that where posting original or at least copied funny memes and gifs. You couldn't upvote an user to many times even if he made great memes. I found out that other many authorized supporters where removing votes from older users posts to keep their vote distribution and I decided to use this also of course. It was an exploit on his bot algorithm that he didn't think about and it was the perfect solution for me, to be able to curate and still be an authorized supporter . Some of them where removing votes for circlejerking, others to do the same thing that I did.
On the 22 of april he finds out about this and he instantly blacklists almost all users that were doing this, including me. I bet he was waiting for this, to blacklist all users that where making problems for him and didn't let him do his abuses. Attention, he didn't blacklist all users that were doing it. When I found out, I immediately went to discord and explained the situation : that there was no such rule that it wasn't allowed and that was the only way you can keep your vote distribution high and not be forced to up vote shitty memes. And at worse he could give a warning first about this matter. I said to him that I could have easily go to the new section and upvote random posts without looking at them and be ok, but I wanted to improve the quality of the platform. This is what a top supporter did : @datapotomus , he was bassically upvoting 20 posts in 2 minute everyday, probably not looking at them and zombee was saying in the chat that this is how supporters should act... I didn't get any reply and was immediately banned out of the discord channel, my messages where removed. All other users that where asking questions where kicked like I was and their messages where removed, messages like this one :
I didn't manage to make a screenshot for what I wrote, because I was the first to act and didn't thought that he will do that and have that attitude as the owner of the platform.
Somebody sent me was going on the discord channel after I was kicked. He was keeping only the ass kissers in the channel and one guy that probably had good intentions (sanmi). Okean and him where liking their own comments :)) :
"One guy" raises a good point and he gets kicked of course. But it was funny :) :
Zombee also removes invite links. All invite links are expired so no one can join the channel. Censorship at it's best against steem users. Nicely done !
At this point I was pretty sure I will find something that will link him to the 6 accounts so I started digging along with a friend. I took it from examining his account from the start and it didn't took to much time to find out that the account @garanger who created the 6 accounts with the sole purpose of abusing rewards was in fact his account like I proved in the second section of the article.
Last but not least after he blacklisted me and the other many users, the second day he said that he will remove the blacklist after 2 weeks and also released a new update that who knows how it will benefit him to continue his abuse without no one bothering him. It was a good timing :)
https://steemit.com/steem/@zombee/dmania-bot-v-3-1-vote-distribution-check-for-supporters
His giving us a chance :)))) I'll ask you one question : "How does it feel when you look at yourself in the mirror?"
Conclusion : I could have done the same thing and create multiple accounts after this update or in the past and make gains, without carrying to much as I had more SP delegated than most of them and also the necessary skills to pull it off (it crossed my mind to be honest), but I choose to create a dMania contest instead and reward users for original or very good memes and also encourage them with my up votes which gave them a high chance on receiving the bot up vote. I also wasted a lot of my time and energy researching and reporting abuse when in fact, the greater abuser was the owner of the platform himself.
By the way this guy calls himself the godfather on the discord channel. Probably the godfather of abuse.
All I can say to you @zombee is that :
It could have been a great platform...
30 minutes ago a "friend" of mine contacted him on discord . He wanted some money for "his" research, time wasted, stress and for zombee's missleading him to waste his energy on a platform that was abused by the owner himself. And also award some of the money for the best meme about zombee in the comments bellow :) "He" will had awarded a total of 200 SBD's for this , but zombee just blocked him. It was a nice try tough, trying to scam the scammer. Some of you will consider this not ethical, but this is what they deserve, the money that he has was stolen money from other users. This post would have been posted in either cases, I worked for 3 days on the post, he couldn't have escaped so easily. Just that some money sent from my "friend" to me (as he promised) would have been nice on top for all my research and time wasted. And also some awards for the community from his money made by him through abuse, would have been even nicer, no?
I hope you will remove the delegation and also hold him responsible for the earnings he made through abuse. I also hope the mining problem on the domain dmania.lol will be investigated properly. He must have a signed contract with you or at least you know his true identity in case he needs to be held legally responsible if he had any part in that.
I am looking for my investment and I want STEEM to grow like I said in the introduction part. I also want to know if my computer resources where used for somebody else financial benefit without my consent. And I think all users want to make that situation as clear as possible after I released the abuses that he made.
I am waiting for the opinions of the community regarding this matter in the comments section. I also want to say to those who still benefit from the dMania platform and don't want the platform hurt because of financial interest, to abstain from making me the villain in the comments or who knows what... But it will be interesting if you can't do that, I will have some fun. The proof is there, you can't deny it as much as you want to.
Till next time...
